author - diane lefer

Diane Lefer, who spent the summer of 2013 offering writing workshops to California lifers on parole, is the author of the crime novel, Nobody Wakes Up Pretty. Her other books include California Transit, short stories awarded the Mary McCarthy Prize; The Blessing Next to the Wound, nonfiction co-authored with Colombian exile and torture survivor Hector Aristizábal; and The Fiery Alphabet, her most recent novel, to be published in September 2013. The only time she went to jail was for civil disobedience.

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books by diane lefer

nobody wakes up pretty

New York City, 1992. For Holly, it's the summer when the city she’s lived in all her life changes past recognition. And the funerals are about to begin. "Let’s get this out of the way," she says. "I’m a white woman who likes black men." That includes her lover Samps. Once a young artist of promise, he's now homeless, living in a Harlem squat, and maybe, Holly fears, clinically insane. But that doesn't explain why she's caught up in a web that connects Jewish, Italian, and black organized crime. Or what any of this has to do with the midtown law firm where she temps, a missing Haitian girl, and a world-famous Japanese monkey. Her friends are getting shot. She and Samps can try to save themselves--or do what they can to stop the killing. " "A sexy, funny, tender-hearted puzzler about a young woman sifting the ashes of America's endless class warfare." -- Domenic Stansberry, Edgar Award winner and author of Naked Moon.